Kiss Me (Like You Want To Be Loved)
by hashtagartistlife
Summary: Marinette smells like cinnamon and sugar; Marinette smells like warmth and love and a welcoming family; Marinette smells like everything Adrien Agreste has ever wanted. [Adrinette, Ladynoir]
1. Chapter 1

**Originally written for a tumblr prompt + pairing meme. The prompt was 'kiss me'. It... kind of got out of hand and became a multichapter thing. Oops.**

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

 _Kiss Me (Like You Want To Be Loved)_

Marinette smells like cinnamon and sugar.

It's something Adrien has noticed before, especially in his Chat Noir form; being a feline superhero has its perks, one of them being heightened senses all around. But it's more than just the tricky blend of sweet and spicy that he likes about her scent; inexplicably, Marinette smells _warm_ , like a comforting hearth at Christmas or a rowdy extended family dinner. He wonders how this could be, when all he can glean from her is literally just sugar and cinnamon, but Marinette smells like _home_ (or how he imagines homes should smell, anyway) and he can't help but want to get closer whenever he's near enough to take in her scent.

This is one of those times. She's walking next to him in slightly awed silence, her eyes on the array of shop windows before them; her surprised expression is endearing, and Adrien has to hold back a chuckle. You'd think she had never seen shops before. He'd wager that she's only just checking her urge to run and press her face up against the nearest storefront, like a child let loose in a patisserie.

Not that he can be throwing stones here, really, since he's only just checking his urge to lean in close and skim his fingers through her hair himself. She's worn it out today, and while it's a lovely change from her usual twintails, it's had the unintentional effect of spreading her scent thickly over her neck and shoulders. It's a windy day in Paris, and as her hair scatters so too does the smell of cinnamon and sugar; it's all Adrien can do to stop himself leaning in and burying his nose in the glossy black strands.

"So what do you think?" he asks, in part to distract himself from thoughts of Marinette's maddeningly alluring scent. "Where do you want to go?"

Marinette starts and wheels around to look at him almost guiltily, as though she'd forgotten that he was there. A faint blush spreads across her face, and Adrien finds that this pale wash of colour is almost as distracting as the cinnamon-sugar fragrance she's emitting. All of a sudden, it's hard to meet her eyes.

"I, uh, um, that is, y-you should choose! It's for your father after all—"

"That would rather defeat the purpose of me bringing you along, wouldn't it?" he interrupts smoothly, placing his hands on her shoulders and turning her around to face the shops again. This has the added advantage of no longer having her glowing pink face turned up towards his expectantly. Unfortunately, this also causes Marinette's warm, heady bakery smell to envelop them both, and Adrien can't help it when his fingertips linger near her hair a little longer than is strictly necessary. "Father liked your taste in fashion, and I trust your judgment. You decide."

At this, Marinette bites her lip and scans the row of inanely expensive high-end stores from under furrowed brows; a little hesitantly, she points to a small boutique towards the end of the line-up, a relatively unknown design house that had nevertheless been garnering steadily positive reviews. Adrien raises his eyebrows; she doesn't fail to impress him. He wouldn't have thought to set foot there in a million years, not for his father; but upon thinking it through he recognises that their clean, luxurious aesthetic suits Gabriel Agreste to a T. He nods at her encouragingly and, with a smile, pulls her toward the shop.

"But you must have _some_ idea what you wanted to get him," Marinette says under her breath to him as they enter, clearly uncomfortable with the kind of rarified atmosphere a haute couture atelier commands, no matter how small or unknown. Adrien laughs, sunny and easy; he grew up in these fashion houses, underfoot seamstresses and embroiderers, babysat by the polished shop assistants that sold his father's designs. His _nappies_ had been Savile Row tailored, for chrissakes. He sometimes forgets what an oppressive, elite world this is, even to someone like Marinette who has dreams of entering it someday. He takes her hand and pulls her towards the scarf rack, where a glittering array of silk and cashmere scarves live on display.

"I was thinking of a scarf," he acknowledges, lightly touching his own turquoise one; the first gift he'd received from his father that had felt genuine. "I wanted to say thank you for this, you know? I've been a model my whole life, but I don't really have the same eye for fashion like my dad does. Help me choose."

Something twists minutely in Marinette's features, but it's gone so quickly that he can't be sure it was ever really there in the first place. She's sorting through the scarves now, a look of concentration firmly in place; her fingers are deft and careful, treating each garment with care. A brief thought of how much his father would appreciate Marinette's reverent handling of the clothing flits through Adrien's head, and he doesn't hide his soft smile; he hopes that when she graduates and is looking for a job, she applies to his father's company first.

"This one," she announces after a moment, holding up a beautifully embroidered scarf in a dark green silk, "or this one. You can have the final pick, Adrien, because I refuse to be solely responsible for a birthday present for _Gabriel Agreste_." The other scarf she holds is a deep purple, almost black; an abstract design is worked throughout the fabric in a lighter dye. Adrien considers them both a while before deciding on the purple. He pays an exorbitant sum of money that Marinette is sure she has never spent on clothes in her entire lifetime _combined_ , let alone on one item, and they step out of the store together.

Adrien lets out a breath he wasn't aware he'd been holding; the rush of clean air around him is welcome after the small boutique, which had been well on its way to being saturated with Marinette's scent. And while he will find any excuse to lean in closer to her to breathe it in, being in prolonged contact with it was… slightly dangerous. In more ways than one.

He should say goodbye to her now; he's already about at his limits in regard to his ability to stay sane in the vicinity of Marinette's cinnamon-sugar smell, but it's a beautiful day and he's alone and relatively anonymous in this crowd. It's a novel experience and he doesn't want to give it up, not quite yet.

Or maybe it's Marinette he doesn't want to give up yet.

"Well, I've got a while before I have to be anywhere," he lies, turning up the collar on his coat against the Parisian wind. "Do you want lunch or something? I'll buy, as thanks for helping me choose Father's present."

"R-really?!" Marinette when she's happy is a sight to behold. Her entire face _lights up_ ; her cheeks scrunch up in the cutest way and Adrien swears her eyes are actually sparkling. Why was _he_ the model again? Get this girl a contract, asap. "Y-you don't have to, it was my pleasure—"

"I want to," he interrupts, and finds to his surprise that it's true. He really wants to spend more time with this girl, even at the risk of his Father finding out about this jaunt and being angry at him. It's not just her scent; there's something about Marinette Dupain-Cheng and her unabashed exuberance and happiness that draws him. It reminds him of someone else he knows, someone else he admires for similar qualities.

Ah, but that someone he knows would never blush in front of him like Marinette is doing right now; her face is practically a fire hydrant, and her eyes are darting everywhere but in his general direction. He waits patiently for a response. "I—well, um, if you insist—um, lunch, right, right, where do you want to go, then, Adri—?"

He claps a hand over her mouth before she can finish; he'd caught something familiar out the corner of his eye and he drags her to an alleyway between the stores, looking over his shoulder.

"Sorry," he whispers to her, his hand still over her mouth; his eyes follow the hulking figure of his driver wandering the streets with unease. "I—uh—I might've snuck out for this expedition— I wanted to keep it a surprise, and— I'm actually meant to be at a fencing tournament, hahaha, oh crap, he's coming this way—"

The alleyway is a dead end, and bare; not even a trashcan to hide behind. Adrien searches frantically for a way out and finds that there is none, save for stepping out directly into the line of sight of his driver. As it is, his driver is nearing their hiding place, whistling merrily; only twenty steps, now nineteen, now eighteen—separate him and discovery.

Something that sounds a lot like Chat Noir whispers _kiss her_ in his mind, and Adrien flushes from head to toe.

 _Kiss Marinette?_ It would almost certainly get him out of his predicament – after all, who apart from a voyeur would want to stick around too long near a couple that's making out (he sincerely hopes his driver is not a voyeur) – but kiss _Marinette?_ It's not that he thinks he won't like it; in fact, the problem here is that he's liable to like it _too much_. He loves Ladybug, sure, but lately Marinette has been invading his thoughts and dreams with a frequency that's nothing short of alarming and figuring out his feelings for her and for his superhero partner is not something he wants to deal with quite yet. And he can't do that, he can't do that to Marinette, he can't ask that of her, and oh god he's much too aware of her in his arms right now, and of her small head resting just under his chin; the wind has done nothing to carry away her scent and is in fact blowing it right back into his face, and his thoughts are an incoherent jumble of _discovery_ and _gotta hide_ and _dead man walking_ and **_kiss her_** —

"Kiss me," Marinette breathes, grasping his scarf and turning him around to face in her direction, and Adrien is startled enough to jump out of his skin (was she a mind reader?!) until he notices her expression and understands. Her face is still red as a sunset but her eyes are strong, and she's clearly been thinking along the same lines as he has (minus the emotional turmoil, probably, because it's not like _she_ has a weird sort of love triangle with one of Paris's erstwhile heroes to take into consideration) because she looks around his shoulder on tiptoes to check where his driver was at. "Uh, uhm, I mean, if you wanted to sort of—hide—"

That's as far as she gets before he swoops down and puts his lips upon hers. He swallows her shocked gasp, her trail of unfinished words; the smell of cinnamon and sugar assaults his nostrils and something in his mind _disconnects_.

 _Home_. She smells like _home_. She smells like warmth and love and a family to welcome him back; she smells like _all he's ever wanted._ Her hair slips through his fingers and Adrien gives his hands free reign to tangle themselves in the night-dark strands, messing it up more than the Parisian wind could ever do. Something aches inside him and he presses closer to her, as though her cinnamon-sugar scent can fill up the emptiness in his chest that's the exact shape of the Agreste mansion.

A hesitant finger brushes along his cheekbone before curling around his cheek, and Adrien loses all thoughts of stopping as Marinette's grip on his scarf tightens and she _pulls him closer_.

It's sensory overload; ever since taking up the Chat Noir identity, all his senses had sharpened to match his alter ego's, even while in civilian form. It was one of the reasons why he couldn't stand Chloe anymore. Her voice grated and she wore some godawful perfume that made him sneeze. But _Marinette_ ; Marinette, he just appreciated _more_. The softness of her skin, the luminance of her eyes, the whisper of her breath against his lips as they moved in tandem.

And her scent. God, her scent, the sweet-sugary-cinnamon-vanilla-bakery scent that was somehow more than the sum of its parts, the scent that was on his tongue and in his head and seeping through his pores right now, and he hopes to high heaven that when he goes to bed tonight her fragrance lingers around him on his hair and skin and clothes—

Something clatters on the pavement behind them and the two of them jump apart as though electrocuted. Their chests are heaving as though they'd run a marathon; their breaths are twin clouds of white vapour in the air. But even through the smokescreen, their high colour is unmistakable—bright, bright, _glowing_ red, red as apples, red as rubies, red as ladybugs. They're silent for a moment, a single, tense, split second, before—

"I—oh god, I'm sorry, Ididn'tmeanto—"

"Tha—I mean, I just—Imeanthatwas—"

Both of them start speaking at the same time, a torrent of embarrassed words; they also stop at the same time. They look at each other again, then something forces itself through the cinnamon-sugar haze in Adrien's brain and he snaps his head around so fast Marinette worries she's broken him.

"Is—is he gone—?" he asks, green eyes searching the road.

He is. The road full of stores is empty, save for a single black cat meowing next to an upturned café chair. That was probably what they'd heard, Adrien realizes, and the irony of the situation isn't lost on him. He only barely represses the urge to make a cat pun.

"I, um," Marinette says behind him, and he flinches—he can't help it, he's not sure he can look her in the face right now. He chances a glance back at her, sees her face still burning up bright as the sun, and has to look away hastily to hide his own damning blush. "Um, it—it's good that he, uh, got… away? I suppose? Now you won't get in trouble with your dad."

Ah, yes. His father. He had a father, right? That's why he was in this fiasco in the first place, right? His father's birthday. Birthday present. Marinette. Yes. It was all coming back to him now.

"I have to be somewhere," he blurts out, as his thoughts eventually reach the fencing tournament he is supposed to be at and very clearly _isn't_. "I, uh, I just remembered, the fencing tournament ends soon, I better get there so my driver can pick me up, um, I, I'll buy you lunch some other time? Sorry, Marinette—"

"No, no, it's alright! I understand, you go—I should go help out at the bakery anyway—"

"Yeah, bakery. Lots of cinnamon sugar scrolls there— _I, I mean_ , um, yeah, sounds great, lunch some other time, I, uh. Better go! Bye!" Yeah, he's gotta go _right now_ before he makes this a bigger mess than it already is. He's sure that whatever he's supposed to do after he's kissed a girl for the first time, _it isn't this_ —but he can't think straight right now, and he can't even _look_ her in the face, and he can practically hear Plagg calling him a coward from his bag but he's not running away because he doesn't want to face her.

It's because he has an overwhelming urge to kiss her again.

He's gotta get away. He almost runs out of the small alleyway but manages to tone it down to politer, brisk walk, and he gives her one last, jerky nod in an attempt to be normal before wheeling around mechanically and marching home, his arms and legs swinging in what he hopes in a jaunty way but makes him sadly look like a malfunctioning robot. The scent of cinnamon and sugar seems to follow him all the way home.

Adrien has only one clear thought for the rest of the day:

 _I'm never going to be able to have cinnamon rolls ever again._


	2. Chapter 2

**Am I going to use cheesy Ed Sheeran song titles for every single chapter in this fic?**

 **Yes. Yes I am.**

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

 _Photograph_

Ladybug, on the other hand, smells clean.

Like the air on a cold winter morning, or the earth after a rainstorm. She smells like an ocean breeze, easy and light; she smells like wide open spaces and bounding above Paris rooftops and freedom.

She smells like everything Chat Noir has ever wanted.

"Race you?" she asks, turning to him with a mischievous glint in her eyes that Chat swears she got off him and can't refuse, and he capitulates with a matching grin.

"Loser's in charge of distractions for the next five akuma," he says nonchalantly, before dropping to all fours without a warning and bounding across to the next rooftop. Behind him, Ladybug yelps as she scrambles to take out her yoyo, and Chat can't help but laugh at the indignant sounds coming from his lady's mouth as she realizes he's got the jump on her. But she's soon in hot pursuit, her yoyo flashing ruby-red under the light of the setting sun, and Chat doesn't hold back his feral grin as the two of them leap and vault over the darkening Paris cityscape.

"That's not fair!" he hears Ladybug's voice from behind him, struggling to make up for his head start, "You cheated!"

"I gotta take what little advantages I can, my lady!" he calls back to her, and at the same moment a wobbly roof tile gives way underneath him, almost causing him to slip to his doom (or at least, to second-place in his race with his Lady, because Miraculous users bordered on invincible—as evidenced by the fact that Stormy Weather once bounced him around most of the town with nary a scratch on him). He manages to recover with rakish grin intact, and even has enough time to turn his head and flash Ladybug a glimpse of said grin. "See? My Miraculous powers aren't so much an advantage as they are a handicap here, Ladybug. In the interests of fairness, don't you think I'm entitled to a bit of a head start?"

Ladybug's response is a very mature sticking out of the tongue, and Chat laughs again before throwing himself back into the race in earnest. This is good, he thinks, the wind in his hair and the world at his feet and his Lady by his side (or trailing a little behind, currently); this is everything he ever wants in life. His real life as Adrien Agreste might be a planned-out parade with an agenda behind every single facet of it, but right now, as Chat Noir, he cannot think of anything else he could possibly desire—

A face slams into is head and he almost loses his footing on the next landing. Scratch that, he does lose his footing on the next landing. Chat Noir collapses dramatically, his face planting itself onto the concrete of some high-rise building rooftop, and he might be almost invincible but a fall like that is still enough to rattle his brain so much in his skull that he feels like he's been put through the washing machine and the dryer. Unfortunately, it's not enough to shake the image of the face that is the cause of his fall from grace, and Chat splutters as he gets back to his knees, his hands over his own face that's suddenly flaming—and not just because of its high-velocity contact with a very solid object just seconds prior.

"Ha! I win, minou!" comes the triumphant voice of his Lady from somewhere beyond him, but Chat doesn't yet have enough breath in his chest to counter that with an appropriate pun. Part of it is to do with his impromptu pas de deux with the concrete rooftop, but most of it is thanks to the fact that he's actually, physically holding his breath. Breathing doesn't particularly feel like a necessity to him in this very moment, not when it entails the maddeningly enticing scent of cinnamon and sugar entering his lungs.

"Minou?" his Lady calls, and this time her voice is closer to him; Chat chances a breath on the slim hope that maybe her clean, cold-air scent would help clear his mind, but all that he can smell is cinnamon and sugar. He wants to growl in frustration; for the love of god, if he was going to have this kind of reaction every time he so much as walked in the same street as a bakery—

"Chat!" Ladybug says again, as she crouches down beside him; her expression is worried, and she winds an arm around his back to help him up. "I didn't realise—are you hurt? I didn't think you would be, but— was there something sharp sticking out, maybe? Are you bleeding?"

It's rare that his lady is so concerned for him when a villain isn't implicated, and he wants to bask in her attention a little more—or he would have, if his brain was not currently being overrun by thoughts of another girl's face and another girl's smile and oh, god, another girl's lips, and this was something he was trying very hard not to think about but the smell from the bakery on the street below them is nothing short of provocative. Chat wants to crawl into the nearest available hole and die. He also wants to see (hold, kiss) Marinette again. He also loves his lady (who is running her hands over his torso to check for wounds, oh god, oh god) with all his heart. He also thinks he might be going a little insane.

If this is puberty, then he sure as hell hasn't signed up for it and wants his money back right now.

"I'm fine—I'm fine—" he manages to gasp out, in between still holding his breath and trying to brush his lady's hands away from his body. He gets to his knees shakily, before reengaging his baton and vaulting over to the next roof, a still-worried Ladybug arcing over with him, perfectly in sync. "It's nothing, my Lady, just a little winded, that's all, the Miraculous might be magic but we're still human after all—"

Winded. Ha ha. He's actually kind of proud of that one. After all, wind was the source of all his problems here; wind was what had carried the scent of the bakery all the way up four stories to reach him. It was kind of a shame his Lady wouldn't recognize it for the pun that it was.

"Hmm," Ladybug says, skepticism all over her face, but thankfully, she lets it go. "Well, in any case, is that a win to me? I guess distraction duty falls to you for the next five akuma, then~"

By now, with her fresh, open-spaces scent surrounding him, Chat has recovered enough to grumble about this turn of events. Ladybug just laughs, high and tinkling, and he feels the tightness in his chest loosen a little; the memory of Marinette seems very far away now, without the devastating fragrance of cinnamon (sinnamon, he's going to call it from now on; no scent on earth should be able exert such a power over a single human being) curling its fingers round him. They fall into their routine banter, light and comfortable, as they make their way to their customary haunt on top of an abandoned set of factories on the outskirts of the city. In fact, Chat is almost on his way to feeling normal, no trace of Marinette working its way through his system like a drug, when something purple flaps out the corner of his eye and he grinds to a stop once more.

"Chat?" his Lady enquires, but then she, too, stops as she spots what he is currently fixated on.

A purple scarf.

More specifically, purple fading out to violet fading out to black, with an abstract design not unlike butterflies worked through it in a lighter shade of mauve. Chat feels every single drop of blood in his body run cold; the scarf is wound around the neck of someone very tall, shrouded from head to toe in a mix of purple and black, cast half in shadow as they stand in front of a round window. Of course, this is not what draws his attention; Paris is the fashion capital, after all, and attracts more than its fair share of eccentric dressers.

No, what draws his attention is the white butterfly in the man's palm, glowing in the semidarkness of twilight.

"No—way…" his Lady breathes, but Chat shushes her hurriedly and vaults over to a nearby treetop for a better view. Ladybug follows suit, landing amidst the foliage with barely a whisper, and ordinarily he'd be almost jealous at her supernatural good luck that allows her to accomplish with ease what had taken him immense effort to do, but not right now. Right now, he has space for only one thought in his brain, and that thought is:

Father.

No. No. He cannot believe it— refuses to believe it. But the more he looks, trying desperately to find something that will discredit the terrible theory forming in his head, the more he sees the similarities: the build, the gait, the peculiar way he holds himself, as though he had piano wire attached to the top of his head and was pulling taut. Model posture. Who else was he to learn it from, when his Father had been so terrified of losing him that he had practically cut contact between him and all but the most trusted of house servants? His Father was the person who had taught him everything about modeling, from the posing to the expressions, and if that scarf wound around his neck hadn't already given the game away then his posture was betraying his identity to Chat in excruciating clarity.

When he opens his mouth, Chat closes his eyes, for the deep bass monotone and the sibilance of his hissed 's' sounds is far too familiar for him to deny.

"Ah, the devastation of betrayal by close family. Is there anything more debilitating to one's mental state? Go, my akuma. Rule over than broken man!"

At this point, Chat no longer knows if the akuma is meant for him or for someone else.

"Chat! Get up!" Ladybug hisses, as the butterfly's wings gloss over black and it takes flight into the night sky. "Quick, division of labour, you go after the butterfly and I'll tackle Hawkmoth—"

"NO!" he yells, wildly, before he can think about it; he sees his Lady's startled expression and catches himself, reining it in. "I mean, I—let me go after Hawkmoth, Ladybug, it's not as if I'll be able to do anything with the akuma, after all—"

She looks like she wants to argue, but time being of the essence, she does not press him. "Fine," she concedes, before darting away nimbly after the black dot in the distance. Chat breathes deeply, once; then he leaps from his hiding place and crashes feet-first into the round window, hoping his steel-capped boots and Miraculous-enhanced strength will be enough to crumple what look like the solid iron shutters that have closed over the opening. In a rare moment of good luck, they are, and he lands amidst their twisted debris, both feet intact.

But that's where his luck ends. Only darkness greets him in the attic that he finds himself in. No butterflies, and no Hawkmoth.

No Father.

Chat doesn't know whether to be grateful or to swear. He chooses neither, instead searching the entire attic manually; an unnecessary exertion, considering his excellent night vision. He'd known from the moment he broke through the shutters that there was no-one to confront in the tiny, dark room.

God, everything is a mess; he slumps down tiredly next to the broken window and stares forlornly into the night. Part of him is disappointed that Hawkmoth is gone, and that he can't be sure now whether he is Gabriel Agreste or not; the greater part of him, however, is relieved that he doesn't have to open that particular can of worms tonight. And an even greater part of him is disgusted with himself for being relieved. Actually, on second thoughts, that part might just be Plagg.

And god, isn't that just a perfect metaphor for his situation with Marinette and his lady right now: part of him is relieved he has the excuse of a fake-kiss to tide things over with Marinette and soothe his own guilt at the 'betrayal' (inasmuch as you can betray someone you're not actually dating, at any rate), part of him is trying to avoid thinking about the entire thing as much as possible, and most of him is disgusted with himself for being such a damn coward. If he has any more ironic parallels in his life right now, he might as well just jump into an ancient Greek play and have done with it.

He thinks this after every night patrol with his Lady, but god help him, he really doesn't want to go home tonight.

* * *

When he drags himself to school the next day, Adrien is wrecked; and even though it's not at all unusual for him to be suffering from a lack of sleep (going to school and modeling at the same time is hard, not to even mention his nightly superhero duties; sometimes he almost understands his Father's insistence that he be home-schooled), the bone-deep weariness that pulls at his limbs and draws dark circles under his eyes is something new.

His Father. His Father. Hawkmoth. The words chase themselves around in his mind, endless looping circles, and whoever had said that repetitive thoughts were a good way to get to sleep had clearly known nothing because that had been the only thing he was able to focus on for the past nine hours, and he had spent exactly seven of them lying wide awake. In his bag, Plagg is equally tired; it had been the first time Adrien had ever seen the kwami become anything resembling 'serious'. He'd had to physically stop him from barging into his Father's room when they returned to the mansion past midnight; when Plagg accused him of being a coward, he could only hang his head in shame and nod.

"But what are you even going to do in his room, anyway?" he'd hissed at his little partner, and Plagg had rounded on him indignantly.

"I don't know! Wake him up, make him confess, look for the poor kwami that he's clearly keeping locked up somewhere because none of us in our right minds would support being used for evil. Anything would be better than ignoring the problem and not doing anything at all! Are you or are you not a hero of Paris, Adrien?"

He'd had no reply to that, but something in his desperate expression must have struck Plagg; he agreed to not take immediate action, and took to the little lego bed Adrien had fashioned for him. They'd proceeded to spend the rest of the night in silence, despite the fact that neither of them were actually sleeping, and in the morning when Adrien had roused him for school, he'd been more irritable than usual.

"Why even bother?" Plagg had snapped at him, when Adrien had told him that he had to accompany him to school, in case of an akuma attack. "I could just tail your father and have done with it, couldn't I?"

They hadn't run into his father on the way to school; Adrien wonders if this is a further case of rare good luck on his part, or if the continued absence indicates something more sinister brewing for him. In any case, he decides to be thankful for small mercies; he doesn't think he can quite deal with his father yet, especially not with an irritated kwami by his side and his brains addled by less sleep that he'd like. He'd packed his bags hastily and departed the house, hoping the relative normalcy of school might distract him from his glum thoughts.

He'd forgotten that school was where he had the most contact with Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

Not! The! Time! His brain (and Plagg, probably) screams at him, as he's rendered helpless by the gentle scent of cinnamon and sugar on the morning breeze. Marinette spots him from across the courtyard, a bright smile lighting up her features, and Adrien wants to melt into the ground as she makes her way towards him. The bakery smell gets stronger, and he feels lightheaded.

"Morning, Adrien!" Marinette greets, and it's all he can do to pull together a vaguely coherent reply.

"M-morning, Marinette! Sleep well?" he asks, and mentally congratulates himself; there, that was coherent, right? No major grammatical screw-ups, nothing to betray his massive internal turmoil. Marinette seems to hesitate a little, but her blinding smile returns as she replies:

"Oh, pretty well! Could have been better, though. You?"

"Tell me about it," he mutters darkly before he can stop himself, and notices Marinette look up at him sharply. "I, I mean," he backtracks, intensely uncomfortable with the level of focus she is directing at him, "I just, uh, I have trouble getting to sleep at night, sometimes?"

"Oh," she says, and if he knew her any better he'd say she looked… suspicious? "I thought… maybe it might have been something else."

Okay, that was new. Flustered, he'd seen many times before on Marinette. Concerned, shy, anxious, confident, commanding; these were all expressions he'd seen on her before, directed at him and at other people. But he doesn't think he's ever seen her look suspicious before. And especially not at him.

What was she thinking?

He doesn't have to wait long. "You… that time we went shopping for your father," she says, and his heart thuds in a way that has exactly nothing to do with his father and everything to do with the girl walking next to him.

"Yes?" he croaks, and he really, really hopes she doesn't notice the nervousness in his voice.

"Did… did you end up giving that scarf to him?" she asks, and for a moment, Adrien is caught completely wrong-footed.

"What?" he asks again, because he's not sure he heard her right; of all the things he'd expected her to bring up about their (disastrous? Wondrous? Adrien doesn't even know anymore) trip to the boutiques, whether his Father had received the scarf had been last on the list.

"I mean, I, it was a present for Gabriel Agreste after all, and I just—what if he didn't like it? Oh god, Adrien, I would never be able to live with myself! Did—did you give it to him? Does he wear it? Did he like it?"

Oh. That explains it. Adrien feels guilty at the path his thoughts had been straying down; wild fantasies of Marinette confronting him about the kiss and confessing her deep feelings for him and maybe pulling him down into another kiss shatter like the iron shutters over Hawkmoth's secret lair. He was an idiot for not providing her the reassurance sooner; of course she was worried about this. He forgets it sometimes, but his Father is one of the most influential people in fashion today, and Marinette wants to become a designer. He should have been more considerate of her.

"Ah, right. Yeah! Yeah, I gave it to him, he loves it! Wears it all the time, I think. Well, I think because I don't actually see all that much of him, you know? He's super busy. Hardly ever in the house. But the last time I saw him, he was definitely wearing it! You did great, Marinette, thanks for helping—"

Well, technically it isn't a lie; he hasn't seen his Father since he'd given him the present, but he sure as hell has seen Hawkmoth. And he'd been wearing said scarf, even over his costume; if that doesn't indicate he likes his present, Adrien doesn't know what does. He chances a glance over at Marinette in the midst of his incoherent rambling to see if she is mollified.

She isn't. Her suspicious expression has sharpened into something positively dangerous, now, and Adrien almost flinches at the dissatisfaction she's exuding. His diatribe about her excellent eye for fashion peters away into silence, and Marinette looks up at him in surprise.

"I'm sorry, did I do something…?"

"No! No, not at all, you just weren't looking very happy so…"

"Oh." She looks pensive again, and Adrien just swallows; he doesn't know what he's said to make usually-bubbly Marinette look so serious, but whatever it was, he doesn't want to say it again. "Is your Father out of the house often?"

"Huh? Well, yeah. He's really busy. Doesn't even sleep at the house, most nights. I mean, I understand, it's got to be hard, being who he is; I don't really mind being alone."

Marinette is silent for a while before she replies. "That must get very lonely," she says quietly, and Adrien stumbles; he doesn't know why such a simple sentence should affect him so much, but something about the starkness of the statement causes him to miss a step.

He's saved from his second faceplant in 24 hours by strong arms coming around him. Marinette catches him around his shoulders and eases him back up, helping him regain his balance. This close, the smell of cinnamon sugar once again forces its way to the front of his mind, and for a moment Adrien blanks on all previous thoughts he'd been having.

Marinette seems to sense the change in mood; suddenly, she's blushing, all trace of her previous no-nonsense demeanour gone, and she lets go of him hastily and turns away, changing the subject. "So! Uh, there was something else I was wondering about that day, just, I'm not sure if you'll be able to answer this for me, but I figure since you grew up around fashion since you were young you'd be able to know—do you happen to know how many items a high fashion house usually makes of each design?"

Today has been an endless stream of odd questions he can't make heads nor tails of from Marinette, and she doesn't disappoint to the last. This question piques his interest in a way that she couldn't possibly guess, though, and Adrien looks at her curiously. "Why?"

"Well, uh, someone I know wanted to get the scarf too, and I was always under the impression that couturiers only make one piece of each design—"

"That's true," he concedes, nodding slowly, "but only for their haute couture collections. Those are made to the exact specifications of the customer, only on demand. Ready-to-wear, I believe, is exactly what its name implies—they're ready-made, to be worn immediately upon purchase with no further input from the customer to the fashion house. As a result, they make several of each design; the number would depend on how large the fashion house is and how much of a customer base they have."

He slows his footsteps, as if allowing his thoughts to catch up to his physical speed. "The boutique we visited last week was relatively small, and the scarf was from their ready-to-wear collection. They would have made a few of the same design—not that many, since they're not that famous yet, but still, more than one."

"Ah," Marinette says, and looks profoundly relieved—exactly the way Adrien feels, actually, but for entirely different reasons. He wonders idly who Marinette plans on getting the other scarf for.

He wonders, rather more intently, who else had already bought a scarf of the same design.

The two of them walk the rest of the way to class in silence, each lost in their own thoughts; neither of them realise that the other is thinking about the exact same thing.

* * *

In retrospect, he should have known his weird streak of good luck wouldn't last.

He stands in his Father's office (and despite what he has learned this morning – that there could be other candidates for Hawkmoth apart from his father—he can't help his wandering eyes, looking surreptitiously for a small, floating creature somewhere in the vast room), cheeks burning, eyes stinging, his insides twisting themselves into knots; his Father hasn't even said anything yet but the cold anger is palpable, so thick in the room as to be suffocating. Adrien wants to disappear. It's evident that he's screwed up; he's screwed up bad.

He just has no idea what the hell it could possibly be.

He keeps his eyes on the purple-black scarf round his Father's neck, replacing the usual white-and-red tie, and waits for his judgement.

And then Gabriel Agreste throws down a thick wad of photographs on the desk between them.

"What," he hisses through clenched teeth, "is this?!"

He spreads the photos out messily with a dramatic sweep of his hand; some of them flutter to the ground in a mimic of butterfly's wings, and Adrien is numb as he takes in their contents.

A deserted alleyway; a narrow, dead-end street. A tall figure in a dark blue coat and a shorter figure in a mint-coloured one, their bodies collapsed together as if they were one person. A gleam of short blonde hair, partially obscured by long black strands flying in the wind. Adrien knows for a fact what those glossy black strands feel like: silk through his fingers, soft and fragrant, imbued with what might as well have been magic for all the effect they had had on him.

Well, now his Father knows too. So does all of Paris and the rest of the world besides, judging from all the gossip sites and magazine articles Gabriel brings up on his computer screen. He scrolls through them quickly with a stony expression, but not so quickly that Adrien misses the headlines.

YOUNGER AGRESTE CAUGHT IN ROMANTIC TRYST

AGRESTE JUNIOR: COULD IT BE LOVE?

ILLICIT RENDEZVOUS OF YOUNG AGRESTE HEIR CAUGHT ON FILM

And all of them, every single one of them, adorned with a photo of him and what was unmistakably Marinette, even through the mosaic filter some websites (only some) had been decent enough to place over her eyes. A hundred different captions, a hundred different websites, but always the same picture: him and Marinette, attached at the lips, blissfully unaware of anything else around them.

He glances up at his Father fearfully, and finds his lip curling in disgust.

Adrien doesn't usually swear, but in that moment, he can think of only a single word to accurately describe his feelings.

 _Fuck._


End file.
